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By DE Editors

August 14, 2019

Luxion, a leading developer of advanced rendering and lighting technology and the makers of KeyShot, the first real-time ray tracing and global illumination program for 3D rendering and animation, announce a new era for KeyShot and the entire product development visualization community. KeyShot Version 9 will support the option to harness the GPU (graphics processing unit) accelerated ray tracing power of NVIDIA RTX with OptiX.

Luxion’s mission has always been to develop the fastest, easiest and most accurate software for visualization. Like most visualization products, KeyShow, in the past, has used only the CPU for complex ray tracing. Now, reportedly, it may be one of the first major vendors in product development visualization to provide the option to use GPU-based real-time ray tracing technology.

Historically, KeyShot would use all available CPU cores, offering a blend of speed, quality and accuracy. After years of observing the maturation of GPU technology, Luxion has moved to add GPU technologies to Keyshot.

In the release of KeyShot 9, Luxion brings CPU and GPU accelerated rendering capabilities together to provide 3D professionals complete control and a choice over what powers their rendering workflow. The implementation provides a seamless experience for KeyShot users without affecting current workflow, requiring unexpected hardware upgrades or forcing users to choose one rendering method over another, providing complete flexibility to maximize their hardware.

Luxion has implemented NVIDIA RTX with OptiX into KeyShot with native, out-of-the-box support for the NVIDIA OptiX ray tracing engine in the Maxwell-class GPUs. Using GPU acceleration does not require a separate KeyShot installation, plugin or a patch. Users make their decision based on their existing hardware or plans to purchase new hardware.

“KeyShot was finely tuned for OptiX integration,” explains Claus Wann Jensen, co-founder and CEO at Luxion. “Our development team was able to quickly show KeyShot with GPU acceleration and where performance could be gained, which further convinced us to move forward with support for NVIDIA RTX.”

When starting KeyShot from a desktop workstation or RTX Studio Laptop, if it detects a compatible NVIDIA GPU, users will see a new GPU button on the KeyShot Ribbon. When activated, the scene in the Real-time View and the rendered output will be rendered on the GPU instead of CPU.

KeyShot with GPU acceleration leveraging NVIDIA RTX with OptiX will be available with the release of KeyShot 9, currently in beta and planned for release in the fall of 2019. For current KeyShot users a separate installation of KeyShot will not be required. Luxion is not raising the price on new copies of KeyShot. GPU acceleration for NVIDIA RTX is currently supported on Windows only. Supported graphics cards include NVIDIA GeForce, Quadro and Tesla products with Maxwell and newer generation GPUs.